Fantasy sports games are ubiquitous in today's society. Leagues associated with fantasy games form in bars, at work, within families, and in neighborhoods and schools. Participants within individual leagues gather prior to the opening of the sports season and draft or auction teams of players. During the season, participants monitor the performance of their players and choose which players to keep active, which players to release, which players to acquire, and which players to trade. Fantasy sports providers generate revenue by providing advertising and/or charging team fees.
Traditional fantasy sports games don't create enough opportunities throughout the season for excitement, risk, and instant gratification—factors that entice the player to play more often. Fantasy sports users get the most excitement out of selecting a roster, making trades, and acquiring new “free agents.” However, in traditional fantasy sports games, successful users are typically required to show patience and infrequently manage their roster for at least two reasons: 1) successful users tend to choose good players from the start, so there is little need to improve the players on the roster and 2) successful users understand that too much tweaking of the roster increases risk and limits the beneficial effects of long-term statistical regression to the mean. Even unsuccessful users are unlikely to actively play the game as often as they would like for at least three reasons: 1) the successful users have all the good players and their not willing to part with them, 2) unsuccessful users realize that they can benefit from the long-term statistical regression to the mean by keeping their roster stable, and 3) the likelihood of finding a quality players available or a willing trade partner is slim given that there are only so many real-world players to go around and only so many statistical categories that can be measured.
Since getting users to be actively involved in the game is what generates revenue (via advertising, transaction fees, data collection, related sales opportunities, or pay to play models), maximizing player engagement is good not only for the player, but for the game provider.
Other attempts have been made to increase player involvement: U.S. Pat. No. 6,656,042 describes an interactive fantasy lottery “where lottery players are given game pieces describing discernable actors (people, animals or events) who will be participating in an upcoming event.” Lottery players could return to a Web site daily, to receive a new game piece. This gave the player something new every day, and introduced some degree of chance/excitement to obtaining a player, but it completely removed the skill involved in assembling a traditional fantasy roster. U.S. Pat. No. 6,371,855 describes a fantasy Internet sports game “that combines the entertainment of fantasy sports with the excitement of participating in an economic venture” by awarding value points based not only on player performance but on the value of those players. This invention rewarded a sophisticated assessment of risk and reward in assembling a roster, but it removed the excitement that comes from a more dynamic roster and the element of chance. In the field of lottery tickets—U.S. Pat. No. 5,887,906—describes combining the instant feedback of a scratch ticket with the personal intuition and ritual of playing one's numbers in a weekly lottery.
Nothing available in the field of fantasy sports today combines the advantages of traditional fantasy sports (using personal intuition and experience to manager your team) with a more exciting, fast-paced, casino-influenced game play. Therefore, there exists a need to provide a type of game play that offers instant and ongoing new content, interaction, and risk that rewards expert assessment without increasing the skill level required to play and while providing an incentive to play continuously.